The Internet is increasingly being populated with audio, image, and video content. Server storage capacity and user bandwidth continues to increase and many websites now contain a wealth of audio, image, and video content, including music, photographs, and movies. Audio and video content can be streamed over the Internet or downloaded by a user. Another popular means of obtaining audio and video content is through the use of “podcasts.” This term was coined after Apple Computer, Inc. introduced its iPod™ product. The iPod™ devices, certain cellphone handsets, and other handheld devices are capable of connecting to a server over the Internet to receive podcasts. A podcast is an automatic downloading of audio and/or video content over the Internet, sometimes as part of a subscription to the content. For example, a user can subscribe to a television or radio program through a website and have the television or radio program downloaded automatically when the user connects his or her unit to the network.
In another field, text searching and intelligent search engines for the Internet are widespread. Many search engines (e.g., Google™) allow the user to enter keywords (e.g., “lawnmowers”) and the search engine then searches for content based on those keywords by searching for the search terms themselves and/or or by searching for concepts that are related to the search terms. However, in the past, these searches were performed on databases created only from textual data available on the Internet. Audio, image, and video content were not included within these searches, unless they were associated with text that was created by a human being for that content (e.g., a textual title for a photograph).
In another field, advertising over the Internet is widespread. Advertising can be targeted to certain topics in which a user is likely to be interested. For instance, many websites that provide a search engine will send ads to the user based on the content of the search entered by the user. As an example, a user who searches for “lawnmowers” through a search engine might be provided with links to websites offering lawnmowers for sale.
To date, there has been no means for performing searches within audio, image, or video content or providing targeted advertising for audio, image, or video content.
It would be desirable to be able to provide a search capability, indexing capability, and other functionality using a database that includes content extracted from audio, image, and video data. This would have the practical effect of making the content of audio, image, and video content searchable and able to be indexed and categorized for future use.
It would be desirable to be able to provide ads automatically along with particular audio, image, or video content that is related to the subject matter of the content. For example, if a user subscribes to a television program discussing stocks and bonds through a podcast service, it would be useful to be able to automatically provide ads for stock brokers along with the podcast. It further would be desirable to be able to provide such ads at particular times within the podcasts such that the ads are relevant to the content of the podcast at a particular time, such as immediately after a certain word is spoken in the podcast.